


What a little hope can do

by Aupple (GiveUpResistance)



Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: F/M, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-20
Updated: 2014-08-20
Packaged: 2018-02-13 23:48:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2169975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GiveUpResistance/pseuds/Aupple
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tommy wonders how he's made it through the last twenty years, not caring all the while/<br/>Grace is dead, and yet he is still in the world - but maybe this war will fix that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What a little hope can do

**Author's Note:**

> I just wanted to get this written before the new season came out and made this fic make no sense.  
> I just wanted stupid coincidences and happiness.  
> Also, I wrote this in one day and I've probably made a heap of mistakes.

Thomas Shelby doesn't know how he got here.

Well, he got to this particular godforsaken part of the world by way of a boat and traipsing over half of Sicily, but nevertheless he has no idea how he has made it so far alive.

Through the last four years of war. Four awful years, even for someone who cares for as little as he does. Sometimes he wonders if that's why he's made it through the twenty years previous, too. Simply by not being alive.

He cares for his family, truly, even if his brothers are idiots. It's why he signed up again, to protect them rather than his country - he's given up too much to bloody England and her agents. That and the fact that he hoped it might kill him at long last.

But so far, no luck, and he's just as dead inside as when he finally realised that Grace was dead.

He probably would've killed that bastard of a police officer if the boys hadn't stopped him. Sometimes he wishes he had, even though he'd be long dead for it now, but who knows if the family would've survived. He's an uncle many times over now, and Ada's Karl has just been married last year.

But Grace. Grace with her voice, and her soft hair and skin. Her bright, clear eyes. All her love, and sadness. Gone.

And yet he is still in the world.

Where there's nothing but mud, and blood, day in, day out.

He makes it through Sicily, somehow, and all the troops move on to Italy proper.

After every engagement there's his first breath, as he realises that he is alive, and there's relief and disappointment all at once.

The other men seem to find him cold, but he doesn't mind. He'll die one day, and there'll be less mourning than for any others.

He's still living, after pushing the enemy back a little more, and a man comes up to him. He's young, hardly more than a boy, it looks, and when he sticks his hand out to shake, he says "Harry," in an American accent.

He shakes with uncertainty. "Tommy."

"You saved my life," Harry says frankly. "Thank you."

Tommy doesn't remember this, he just points his gun and shoots and blocks the carnage out later. "How?"

"He was coming at me with a knife, and you shot him."

He's not entirely sure how to respond, so he shrugs. "I wonder how many people I've theoretically saved with a bullet in a boy doing what he thinks is right."

Harry doesn't say anything as he walks away.

What Harry does do is manage to find him a couple of weeks later with a packet of cigarettes and an offer to share them.

It's been too long since he's had one, so he lets the boy light it for him and takes a grateful breath.

"My girl sent them. She's a nurse somewhere out here. You kind of remind me of her - her accent, see, it sounds a bit like yours coz her mother's Irish-"

"Only an American could mix our accents up."

Harry laughs. That's what Eileen's mom tells us whenever we say it. Eileen's my girl-"

"I'd guessed that."

"'Course, sorry."

As Harry jabbers on about Eileen, Tommy wonders absently why Harry's regiment are mixed in with the Eighth, but he's not sure even the commanders have any idea about what's going on so he puts the issue aside.

Harry tends to hang around him, though god knows why for Tommy's bad company, but he ends up enjoying talking to him, hearing about New York and his life there.

So when he sees something in the corner of his eye and Harry, he's impulsive, knocking into the younger man and falling to the ground, an explosion and darkness.

Bright white light fills his vision, then a face hovers over him, and her pretty features are unmistakeable.

Grace.

Grace has come for him at long last.

But she's slipping away, and so is he.

He wakes in a hospital bed, not entirely sure whether to be happy or not.

He turns his head to the left to find Harry beaming back at him. "You saved my life again. Mortar fire."

"I can't remember."

"Well, you did." There's a bandage around the kid's head, and one of his arms is in a sling, but he slides out from under the white sheets nevertheless and stands in between their beds. "I'm afraid your leg isn't doing so well though."

Tommy doesn't exactly need to be told this, given the pain the limb is in, but he nods. "I've probably got you to thank for keeping me alive though."

Harry shrugs. "Maybe, but you've saved my life twice now. I can't thank you enough."

These declarations of gratitude are getting a little tiresome, and Tommy says so, which only makes Harry laugh.

Unfortunately, he then changes the subject to something that Tommy likes even less. "Who's Grace? You kept saying her name earlier, over and over."

He hesitates briefly, but telling Harry won't change anything. "A woman I loved."

"Oh. Is she-"

"She's dead."

Harry's face falls. "I'm sorry."

"It was a very long time ago."

"Still-" He hears a door opening and Harry's face lights up again. "Eileen!"

"Harry, get back into bed right now." The voice does have an Irish lilt to it, which means she's undoubtedly Harry's 'girl'. She hurries past him, helping the American back into his bed before turning to Tommy. "Mr Shelby, I hope he wasn't bothering you, he has a tendency to I'm afraid..."

Her words fade into a hum in Tommy's mind, as he stares at this girl who is Grace but Not Grace, same features, same nose, lips, cheeks, smile. Her hair is darker than Grace's softly spun gold, teetering between blonde and brown, and her eyes are more blue-green than Grace's and yet a familiar shade - one that has stared back at him his entire life.

"Mr Shelby?"

Eileen is looking at him enquiringly, so he shakes himself from his confusion and says, "I'm sorry, I was just trying to work out who you remind me of."

"It's fine. I just wanted to thank you for saving Harry's life - again. I know that he's difficult to put up with-"

"Hey!" Harry interjects, but the girl sends him a fond smile and he instantly brightens.

"-but I love him for all of it."

"It's quite all right."

"Oh! I'm Eileen, by the way. Eileen Connemara."

He can scarcely believe it. He doesn't want to hope such things, but he can't help it, not when she and Grace look so alike, sound so alike - and her name. He thinks that it would be just like Grace, take that joke and use it, but then he forces himself to remember that he never knew her well enough to know that, and that she's dead, long dead.

And yet.

He wants to believe that this girl is Grace's, both of theirs, because she's old enough to be for certain, but it just creates more questions in his mind. And he still wants it to be true more than anything else in the world.

He tries to put it out of his brain, just enjoy the time he has with the girl who might be his daughter.

Harry approaches him almost shyly for the first time ever, and says, "I'm going to be going back out soon."

Tommy's leg isn't healing, so he's still stuck, unable to rest any weight on it, but Harry is young and ready to fight again.

"Eileen and me, we're getting married."

"Congratulations."

"No, I mean- we're getting married tomorrow. And we were wondering if you'd be there, because you're my friend and I owe you everything, and I wanted to ask one more favour?"

He's shocked, and pleased, and if-Eileen-is-his-daughter-then-he's-going-to-be-at-her-wedding and that is more than he can ask-

"Would you walk her down the aisle? She doesn't have a father back home to do it for her anyway, and she likes you-"

"Yes," he gasps out. "Yes, but- I'm not that great at walking nowadays."

"Crutches will solve that."

Harry's beaming, and Tommy can't help but smile back.

**  
  
**

_Dear Mum,_

_I know that you're going to be upset, but you're miles away and by the time I get back you'll hopefully be over it._

_You see, I married Harry yesterday._

_He's going back to his regiment in a couple of days, and we decided that we'd rather be married, just in case something happens. If anything does happen - I'd be just as distraught whether or not we had married, and Harry felt the same, so we found a little church in town and did it._

_It was a simple thing. Abby managed to weasel out of her duties for an hour so that she could be there, and the man who saved Harry's life, Tommy, walked me down the aisle. Well, he limped, because his leg's no better, but he was really lovely, and he made Harry promise to take good care of me always._

_I hope you're not too angry with me, but I love Harry so much, Mum._

_I hope everything is good with the pub._

_Your loving daughter,_

_Eileen Anderson_

Eileen cries when Harry leaves, but only when he's really gone, and when she comes in on her rounds he pats her hand awkwardly, and she smiles at him despite her red rimmed eyes.

She talks to him when her shift allows, and relates the contents of his letters, which are always humorous, and worries over her husband.

He's leaning towards the opinion that there's no way for her not to be Grace's, but that makes him wonder how that can be, because Grace is dead, isn't she?

Then Eileen is reading one of Harry's letters out loud to him as he attempts to walk without crutches

_There's this bloke in one of the British groups who we were talking to, and his voice is even posher than Lady Sarah's so the other boys tease him like hell for saying words oddly. It's the Aussies that have the weirdest accents though, can't understand what some of them are saying it's so bad._

"Lady Sarah?" he asks, not quite daring to hope.

Eileen flushes. "My mum has a more refined accent than some people, and some people like Harry call her Lady Sarah. But he said it to her face once and she got really angry, so no one lets her overhear them anymore."

"Why'd she get angry?"

Eileen shrugs. "I'm not sure. I wondered sometimes if she really was a lady or something before she came out to America, but I was born in New York, so I don't really know anything about my past, or any family other than her."

"Your father?"

He tries to keep his voice casual, and Eileen doesn't seem to notice anything amiss, since she replies, "I never knew him."

He's not going to walk properly any time in the near future, so he's returned to England, more damaged than he left, and more whole than he's felt in years.

Eileen writes occasionally, and passes on messages from Harry. Somehow she still jokes in them, despite the atrocities she has seen.

The letters make him smile, in the darkness of war, and Aunt Pol asks him how he is doing so now, with everything that is going on, and he wants to tell her, _I think I have a daughter, I think Grace might be alive_ but he doesn't have the courage.

The Blitz seems to be over, but the destruction is massive and it's a miracle that none of the Shelbys are majorly hurt in any of the bombings. Their people are dead, though, and the Garrison is nothing but a shell. Rebuilding and keeping everyone fed, that's what needs to be done, and Ada is a bloody force of nature while Pol gives orders from her chair.

And they keep on.

Hitler is dead, Germany has surrender, and Eileen telegrams, asking if his offer of a place for her and Harry to stay is still available.

It is, of course - in fact, everyone is gathering in Birmingham for the return of their boys, so the house they own in London is empty.

They arrive in June, and Harry claps him on his back, telling him that his leg obviously can't be too bad if he can walk again, and Eileen punches her husband in the arm and hugs Tommy briefly. She starts thanking him for Harry's life again until he points out that he'd probably be dead too if he hadn't jumped on Harry that time.

He doesn't know how to act around his maybe-daughter and his friend, but it's enough to see them alive and happy, so he leaves them to themselves for the most part.

He arrives back to the house one afternoon, having spent the better part of a week looking over some nice horses down west, to find a note left for him. They write that they've gone down to Southampton for a few days to meet Eileen's mother as she arrives from New York.

His blood runs cold, because if she is Grace- if she isn't- he doesn't know what he can do, no idea in the slightest. The note is dated from yesterday, however, so perhaps he could head back to Birmingham, though that course of action would do nothing but delay what will happen.

He's mulling it over when the door is unlocked and he hears Eileen's voice say, "I'm sure it'll be fine, Mum, Tommy is really very good to us."

No. They shouldn't be back so soon.

He's frozen in place has Eileen comes into view, says, "Oh, Tommy, you're back, this is-"

She steps out from behind her daughter - their daughter, for there's no doubting that she is Grace, older now, of course, but it's her.

"Grace," he hears himself breathe, as if from a distance.

She is staring, and the emotions on her face are mixed, as if she's fighting a smile and tears and the urge to run, just as he is. "Tommy."

He can't help himself, he has to step forward, again and again until he's in front of her and his fingers are in her hair and his lips press against hers for the first time in twenty six years. All he wants is to kiss away the hurt and tears and wrong that he's done her, but he forces himself to pull back, let their foreheads rest together.

"Grace, my Grace." She's here, she's real, she's alive. "I'm so sorry, Grace. I'm so sorry."

The door slams into the frame and Tommy remembers that they're not alone. He drops his hands from where they're resting in the still-soft blonde waves, but lets one of them fall simply to Grace's shoulder instead before looking up.

Eileen is staring, with something akin to comprehension dawning on her face, and Harry looks guilty for having let the door slam. Still, he maintains his reputation for chatter by saying, "Sarah's your Grace?"

Tommy nods once, and Eileen gasps. "Oh Lord." She covers her mouth with her hands as she stares between them.

"I think that maybe we should all sit down and have a talk," Grace suggests, always sensible, and Harry quickly agrees, guiding a shocked Eileen to the sitting room.

"Grace?"

She looks up at him, somewhat hesitant, though just as beautiful as she always was.

"I still love you."

As her lips curve upwards, Tommy finds himself able to do nothing but smile back, and one her hands finds one of his. "I love you too."

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so glad I've written this and now they're out of my head.


End file.
